(04-14-2015, 07:17 PM)Omegajak Wrote: That said. To answer you threads titular question. Nothing is wrong with the way Donkey Kong looks. There's just nothing to draw from him as a character, so I'm not intrigued. He lives on his island, that's his home some crocodiles feel they can treat Peaceful Powerful primeapes anyway they want so they steal Banana's then they Steal the hero? I dunno. Maybe the fact it feels like people are interesting in DK like they are in Sonic and Mario is that DK always seems to be playing a background character. He's always there but overshadowed. DK has his moments but sometimes not even in his own games. Like he goes back to being an Antagonist in the Mario mini Series (Though I know that's apparently mischievous than anything malicious.)
I'd have to disagree on both that there's nothing wrong with how DK looks, and that theres nothing to draw from his character.
Unlike Mario and Sonic (if we still want to use them as the standard), it seems like Donkey Kong's design has had less of a natural evolution between games and instead has just had a verity of clumsy renditions as dev teams try to figure out what exactly the best way to make him iconic would be. You could say a lot of the dk's have their own appeals, but other than maybe the pixelated original donkey kong and the rare dk, you can't really break him down into eras like sonic and he hasn't really been tweaked to a level that everyone seems to enjoy like mario. (An example of that tweaking being like his recent appearance in tropical freeze's promotional art were donkey kong proportions and fur texture and even some of his expressions look off model to the donkey kongs's we've seen before.) I'd say that this aspect of him is really apparent in games like smash bros were other teams can't figure out the best way to represent him either. Donkey Kong isn't as abstracted as his contemporaries, which isn't bad, but has some expected complications.
But in terms of what we can draw from his character I'd say that there's a plethora especially in comparison to early mario and sonic. My personal frame of reference stems from my favorite game in the series the original donkey kong county. To appreciate the personality of Donkey Kong you really have to consider the world that he was placed in, in his definitive reimagining. The world of dkc is one that's inseparable from the form of media it takes place in and from the context of the series as a reimagining of an existing ip. As we can see by his silly 90's antics, blasting his boombox with his candy kong poster, and by his sloppy house his including quirky table cloth complete with a flower and vase, Dk is pretty clearly painted to be a relaxed and simple guy. In a nice instance of game convention and story telling synergy, Dk is firmly established as a protagonist character being expected to fill the roll by cranky kong (who in himself acts as a exaggerated commentary of the game in himself), and by his own simpleton and innocent goal of recalling his banana hoard (which is very much a product of typical video game convention).
It's actually pretty humorous that in the face of lizard imperialism, he's drawn to action by missing bananas, and that humor isn't lost on the part of the developers as donkey kongs special animations and skits all involve humor, and of course just the design of the character is very humorous well. I'm not saying anything surprising or ground breaking but just that all of those aspects are addressed makes him feel like a very realized character, and its not hard to imagine how he'd feel in most situations (not to mention the music that characterizes how the character would feel so well in each environment)
((Normally I'd be skeptical to the idea of having such a simplistic character, but what really sells me personally is both the history of the intellectual property, and the journey and gameplay itself which treats dk as such a simple guy with only a few tools going so far with so little in an ambiant world))
Oh yeah to address that title question myself, I'd say that the DKC series visual design compliments the mechanics very well in terms of complexity.
I mentioned before that "the world of dkc is one that's inseparable from the form of media it takes place in", and that is shown a lot aesthetically. The typical jungle theme is pretty dramatically changed by the industrial elements that carry over from the original ip (an entirely industrial game), and some of those things like the tires, barrels and crates, and armored enemies work towards making the gameplay itself deeper than some other platformers. The core mechanics also have a sense of complexity as already stated in this thread, with advanced techniques and technical playing being crucial, which is complemented by the characters natural animation with draws a lot from the rhythmic swinging and moving of apes. (If I recall correctly rare actually looked at real apes to base donkey kong's movements on, with loyalties taken of course to make the cartoony character work.) In terms of making a unified experience, the tightness of the mechanics and how they are visually represented contextually really wroks.
Anyways those are some of the elements that have made an impression on me in regards to an ip that I otherwise wouldn't care about.
The mechanics are beautiful as a speed game and just in terms of mastery and fun in general, and the world feels much deeper than you'd ever really think something so superficially shallow could ever seem.
I'd say it was a more fun game than sonic and tails or smb3 even, but I don't think the fallowing games in the series ever really fully realized what made the first so special. I'd say part of why Donkey Kong lost relevance is due to how convoluted the later games got and losing a lot of the familiarities that the first game had so quickly instilled in people. Nintendo doesn't really seem to understand the character that Rare reimagined Donkey Kong to be, as simple as it might seem, as they choose to hardily give him motivation at all while homogenizing him in there special Nintendo way and giving him the worst voice ever.